Black Book

A fragment of the Garden of Remembering

Revision as of 01:38, 27 July 2017 by Apheori (talk | contribs) (INTRO?!)




INT. House entryway downstairs - morning
It's a house. It's not terrible. It's full of plants. Someone upstairs, MORRIS, is yelling at his computer.
MORRIS
(upstairs)
NO! That is not what I told you do to!
There's some clonking at the door, and then a somewhat bundled-up woman, JENNIFER, manages to get it open and stumbles in with some bags. She drops the bags on the floor, kicks off her shoes, and hangs her coat and scarf on top of another coat on the wall.
A cat slinks out of another room and sniffs at the bags, nearly trips Jennifer as she picks them up again, and then wanders off.
MORRIS
(upstairs)
AGH! What?! No! Don't fucking do that now! Fuck you, don't... on top of... FUCK YOU!
A woman's voice responds, also upstairs, SHANNON.
SHANNON
(upstairs)
Hey, are you okay? What is going on?
MORRIS
(upstairs)
NO I AM NOT FUCKING OKAY! THIS FUCKING DATABASE JUST FUCKING DELETED ITSELF!
Jennifer fishes around the bags in the meantime and pulls out a large book. It's a thick volume, with ageing pages bound in black, looking like some sort of menacing fantasy thing. Its only label is a silvery symbol of a tree set into the spine.


INT. House upstairs - morning
The kitchen is also full of plants, mostly hanging, and also some actually useful-looking herbs and such on the counters/sills.
Morris is at the kitchen island/bar-thing with his laptop. On its screen are some tmuxes, a browser with something like a hundred tabs, the current one open to mysql documentation (the page on something really basic like JOIN or DROP), and some random videogame in the background.
He's staring at a tmux blankly.
Shannon is standing nearby, holding a pineapple, staring at him blankly.
SHANNON
(after a somewhat long pause)
That doesn't sound like something that's supposed to happen?
MORRIS
(loudly)
NO IT ISN'T.
SHANNON
(putting the pineapple down)
Could you please stop yelling?
MORRIS
NO.
Sorry. What?
Shannon shakes her head and gets out a frying pan and some random ingredients.
Jennifer comes in and clonks the book down on the counter next to Morris' computer, shoving a potted plant out of the way.
JENNIFER
(leaning over right next to him)
HAVE YOU CONSIDERED USING THE RIGHT COMMANDS?
MORRIS
(leaning right back, putting his face right in front of hers)
NO. NO I HAVE NOT.
JENNIFER
Just tell me this wasn't production.
(sitting next to Morris)
Also why are you up here?
MORRIS
Egh.
(indicating Shannon)
She bribed me. Said she'd make me breakfast if I came upstairs for a change.
JENNIFER
(opening the book)
But you haven't even gone to bed yet.
MORRIS
What's your point?
SHANNON
Nice book. Want some pancakes?
JENNIFER
Yeah, sure...
Jennifer flips through some of the pages, skimming them. Most of them don't really have much on them, though others are quite covered in various texts, symbols, maps. She stops on one page, flips back to the index, and then looks back at the page. It reads as follows:
Backstory. Sidestory. Supposition, the antithesis of practice. Nevermind practice. This isn't practice. This is a treatise by the narrator, an examination of could-have-beens, an aside from the GM. We can talk about anything. Let's talk about anything.
You, for instance. Who are you? What do you dream? How far would you go? Do even you know yourself, or will you be just as surprised as all the others when, after all of this, it turns out it was all for jackfruit? For my own part, I can really only speak for me... and maybe, just maybe, for you.
Shall we go, then, you and I?
This isn't the important part.
Morris mutters incoherently and starts cloning a backup database.
The frying pan sizzles as Shannon ladles in some batter.
Jennifer turns the page. This one contains even less.
He was your favourite, your least understood. His world is yours, and yet he no longer is. Can you take his place? They will know you to be him, so long as you don't give up.
She turns the page again, finding only a name.
Ense Vardaman.
And then everything goes dark.

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Notes